


Finding The Music

by HK44



Category: Original Work
Genre: Crickets, Music, i seriously do not know how to tag this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-13
Updated: 2015-03-13
Packaged: 2018-03-17 16:37:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,043
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3536489
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HK44/pseuds/HK44
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>We had to write about a cricket arriving to New York during my Creative Writing class. It was fun.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Finding The Music

“Billius!” Marianne screeched, wings fluttering. “Get your six-legged butt over here!”

            Billius, or Bill as he preferred, shifted in the tall, green grass. His antennae twitched. Slowly he hopping over to his mother, Marianne, a praying mantis that had adopted him – and seventeen other siblings that she had eaten.

            Not that he knew about that.

            Not that she planned for him to _ever_ know that.

            His wings fluttered and he lowered his antennae submissively, rubbing his legs against his side. “Yes?” he chirped, glancing at the not-so subtle remains of his fifty-seventh stepfather.

            Marianne made a noise. He snapped to.

            “You’ve got to start living on your own, boy!” she seethed.

            “But I can’t. I’m a cricket,” he protested, weakly.

            His mother sat back, rising slow. “What. Was. That.” The words were not questions and Bill shrunk back nervously. “I thought so,” she bristled, settling back down.

            Bill relaxed “But why must I go, Mother?” Do you no longer cherish me as I were truly yours?”

            She huffed. “I have a hunger,” she said, “that can no more be supported by a diet of hunky young men.”

            Bill shifted, antennae slamming up in surprise. His mother rose once more. Bill backed up. His almost wife of three years had stood like this when he’d seen her band and devour Cedar, a sexy but idiotic ladybug everyone had hated to love.

            “Um, Mo-“

            “Silence, Billius!” Her front legs clasped his face. “Don’t you want to hear about my new diet?”

            “No,” he squeaked.

            “Well,” his mother continued as though he hadn’t said a word, “my new diet? It’s… you.”

            She lunged and he let out the shrillest noise he’d ever made. It caught her and she collapsed, body spasming until he finally stopped and then, slowly, she started to rise again, muttering violent curse words that I’m not allowed to use.

            Bill, the poor bastard, took off, hopping as fast his tiny insect legs could carry him. He slid over an icy pond, flailing, with tiny shrieks bursting from him as fish rammed into the ice, trying to eat him. There was a crack when one particularly large fish bolted into the icy exterior from the dark depths below.

            Bill screamed and fled like the cowardly cricket he is.

 

\----

 

            As the sun stretched beyond the horizon, shadows waving a pitiful goodbye as the grass began to slow dance in the breeze, Bill nestled in the dirt, watching the world around him with nervous eyes.

            When all was quiet and the rustling was the breeze in the leaves, not predators, Bill climbed to the very top of a rather lengthy piece of grass, antennae twitching worriedly while he gazed around, watching the sky for birds before settling down, closing his eyes as his antennae relaxed. His body slid down the grass leaf a little. Very slowly, he released the song brimming inside.

            He called out to the heavens, a soft melody sliding together from his small body, echoing silently in the quiet air. D-sharp molded into A-minor which curled around B-flat like a symphony of strings. He melted into his song. The slow beat cradled him like a blanket.

            When his song finished, stilling in the low moan of wind, Bill slid down the grass leaf the rest of the way, watching the sky be swallowed up by the grass that tickled its stars. He sighed, eyes downcast as he nestled back into the dirt, letting the musical of life bribe him to sleep with its deep tones and slow melody, wind groaning into the whining of a creaking tree and the nocturnal flowers blinking awake.

 

 ----

 

            Waking was as easy as falling asleep. Birds chittered, swooshing overhead, the beat of their wings fast and unending. The nocturnal flowers muttered good night, closing their petals as the sun chimed in a good morning, up with the crowing of the rooster, the peaks of sunlight warming Bill’s bed of dirt.

            The breeze, quicker and warmer, curled around him, whispering him awake with tiny breaths. He fluttered his wings, stretching in the warmth and stillness.

            Dreams of reaching a place where all music came from had sprouted as he slept and, ready as ever, Bill found himself listening intently to the song of the skies, hopping in its general direction as he followed the melodic noise.

            Wings bristled as he moved, kicking up dirt in his path. Leaves rustled, birds crowed and the wind sang. Every so often, a louder, more compelling melody drifted and he changed direction, sometimes doubling back only to find the melodic noise silenced.

            He’d wait for hours, staring at the sky, but the melody would never come back, never to wash over him with its beautiful tones again, and, in the end, he’d turn and follow something, something good but great.

            In the night, he’d await the silence of the moon and climb solemnly to the tip of a grass leaf and play his song. On the days where the day had been dangerous, his song would be fast, action-packed, with high-strung violin solos. On days where the day had een calm, his song would be smooth and slow, long moans of his violin-like tune, crowing to the sky.

            Finally he came across a tune so similar to his it might as well have been home in the gras. He followed the tune obsessively and it never failed him, only quieting in the slow hum of night.

            In the brightness of the peering moon, Bill jumped from grass to concrete, easing in to the heart of the city. The rumble of voice slid over him and he lost the tune to the roaring of the waking of the night.

            Catching slivers of it, he followed, scrambling around the stampede of giants that yelled above him, screeching in a foreign tongue. He darted forwards, falling into grass and scurrying forward.

            Then the music played.

            Rich tones overlapping as they caressed each other’s notes and filled him with intimate pleasure. One song sighed, another soothed and one more beat loudly into the dark, sliding into each other.

            He laid against a leaf, no longer aware of the noise around him.

            He had found the place where all music came from.

            He had found his home.

**Author's Note:**

> I know absolutely zilch about music so the whole D-sharp to whatever-minor is pretty much me just bullshitting.


End file.
